by a Tea Party challenger, an obscure professor with a severely underfunded campaign?

After all, the tea party is dead, right?

In a March 18 piece

headlined "The Tea Party's Over," National Journal's Josh Kraushaar wrote, "2014 is shaping up as the year the Republican establishment is finding its footing."

Actually, the Tea Party showed signs that it wasn't completely moribund even before the Cantor cataclysm. Earlier this month in Mississippi, Tea Party challenger Chris McDaniel forced six-term GOP Sen. Thad Cochran

into a runoff

, and the smart money is on McDaniel to unseat the courtly veteran. Of course, that's the same smart money that said there was no way Cantor loses. House majority leader. Six-term Senate veteran. It doesn't get much more establishment than that.

All those tea party obits didn't come out of nowhere. They reflected real developments. The challengers were losing to establishment candidates in many contests. The problem comes from overanalyzing, from overstating, from reaching definitive conclusions prematurely, from making two plus two equal five, from declaring the winner in the third quarter.

Which isn't new (see: "Dewey defeats Truman"). But in our overcaffeinated, highly competitive media climate, with 24/7 cable, politically obsessed websites and much, much more, there's immense pressure to advance the story, to say something new, to have a fresh take.

The tea party isn't so much an actual political party as useful shorthand for a collection of candidates and organizations that tilt way rightward, are hostile to the GOP establishment and are allergic to compromise.

Just as it isn't quite ready for burial, it's probably wise not to exaggerate what this means for its prospects in future elections. Not that that's any comfort to Republican incumbents, who experienced a distinct chill when the election results from Virginia came in Tuesday night.

Political analyst Stuart Rothenberg, editor and publisher of The Rothenberg Political Report, says there was no hint of the historic shocker in pre-election survey data, money totals, track records. "

Rothenberg wrote in March that "it's already clear that the pragmatist conservatives have stopped the anti-establishment's electoral momentum." But he says he wasn't suggesting that the tea party is going away anytime soon. The divide in the Republican Party remains deep and profound.

"The anti-establishment forces only need one victory to convince them that they are on the right track," he says.